I’m calling this piece of Wiki history, “legacy found.” But by the fourth revision, we see all of these theories converge on Dmitri Malashenkov’s revelation in October 2002 at the World Space Congress in Houston – namely that Laika had died from overheating after only a few hours.Īfter forty years of speculation, one of the great mysteries of the Space Race had been solved, and Wikipedia provided the clearing house through which all of the competing and outdated theories were soon filtered out. Others speculated that she had been poisoned by her final dose of food, or overheated when the batteries failed on the climate control unit. “Sputnik II was not designed to be retrievable and it was destroyed on re-entry on May 14, 1958, but Laika had already died before that after her oxygen supply ran out.” The original entry sought to combine two of the most popular theories about the dog’s demise: Soviet sources from the fifties were vague and contradictory, and even the advent of glasnost’ and the dissolution of the Soviet Union did little to loosen the secrecy surrounding the early days of the manned spaceflight program. The first is the clarification about how she died. It sports a table of contents, a biographical card, and the gold star of a Wikipedia “Featured Article” - testimony to (among other things), the creative energies and persistent attention of author/editors from around the world, the growth and elaboration of Wikipedia as a unique, networked repository for encyclopedic knowledge, and the enduring significance of a humble stray dog, plucked from the streets of Moscow to carry the dreams of people beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.Īmong the many twists, turns and pools of the page’s history, two moments in the evolution of Laika’s Wikipedia presence stand out as particularly salient to me. Twelve years, and more than 2000 revisions later, the first space dog’s entry runs well over 4,000 words. At 97 words, it offered the essential elements of her biography: The first entry on the space dog appeared on January 25, 2002, a little over a year after the community-sourced encyclopedia began. The fact that the dog was deliberately sent to die provoked outrage in the West, and the exact circumstances of her demise remained the source of debate and rumor until long after the Cold War ended.Īt first glance the history of Laika’s life on Wikipedia inspires respect and admiration. The Soviets prepared her for a seven-day mission and claimed she was humanely euthanized after the experiment had concluded. Putting a satellite into orbit is easier than returning it safely to earth, and in 1957 the technology for bringing her capsule back did not yet exist. The circumstances of her death remained mysterious for decades and are controversial to this day. The fact of her voyage made her an instant celebrity as well as a symbol of Soviet supremacy in the Superpower’s new proxy struggle, the Space Race. Less than a month after the launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the Soviets sent Laika to the great beyond in Sputnik 2. I have a thing for space dogs, especially Laika, the first living being to orbit the earth.
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